


The Labyrinth

by Stonestrewn



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Minotaur sat and saw the waves rearing frothily and come stampeding down over the labyrinth walls.</p><p><i>I wish there had been some warning</i>, they thought. <i>I would have liked to know.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Labyrinth

When the labyrinth sank it did so unassumingly, with little impact on the world it left behind. 

The gods did not reach down. There was no foreboding thunder, no flashes of lightning from the sky. It was not foretold in the cracks of bones or fall of feathers or the husky voices of oracles. The water simply rose one day to fold the island into the ocean. First it was there and then it was not, and no one noticed much beyond a seagull or two.

The Minotaur sat and saw the waves rearing frothily and come stampeding down over the labyrinth walls.

 _I wish there had been some warning,_ they thought. _I would have liked to know._

But gods care little about the wishes of their subjects and for this they must not be blamed. So far above this little world of mortals, the squabbles down below rush by too fast and frantically for such a colossal consciousness. Their every absent action magnifies – they cannot keep track of it all. They mutter a word in their sleep and a war is prolonged by a decade. They wave their hand to shoo a fly away, and an island is swallowed by the sea.  Every little shunned creature they brand deathless and confined blur together into one or nothing and how can those who exist outside of time understand the grief of years passing?

When the salt flooded the Minotaur’s nostrils they did not go to the trouble of panic. Dying was no longer for them, after all. They looked up at the sun, high and haughty - it shone on unconcerned. Then the water rose higher than the Minotaur’s horns and then the sinking truly began. The sunrays trailed along for a bit but were soon bored and left the labyrinth to its dim and chilly fate.

 _I will never see the sun again,_ thought the Minotaur. _And it won’t miss me at all._

The weight of the water was not so hard to bear. A Minotaur is a sturdy creature. The sting in their eyes was more difficult, though – they experimented with blinking but also closed them for long stretches of time. Breathing was too bothersome to figure out, so they stopped. 

But other than the stinging and the chill and lack of sun, the labyrinth was much the same submerged. The walls still stood, the paths still winded, the floor was still stone and unforgivingly so. It was still grand of scope, a maze of marvel, impossibly intricate. It was still a kind of cage and the Minotaur was still inside it.

The descent came to an end as the once-island hit the ocean floor with a lazy rumble. It quaked, one last protest against the relocation, but settled into complacency as an underwater mountain soon enough. The Minotaur sat and felt the sea shift through their fur.

 _Being cursed is bad enough,_ they thought. _But cursed and forgotten is worse._

They waited for a while. Nothing happened. Some weeds swayed to and fro. The ocean was thick down here, speckled with tiny things growing and decaying, it tasted strong and old. There was no light, but the Minotaur, like all of their kind, had eyes tailored to the glum and godforsaken and had soon grown accustomed to the dark. When they could make out every brick in the opposite wall, they stood. 

It was hard work, sea-floor path finding. Unlike air, the water must be pushed. The Minotaur struggled on, forcing their hooves to remain on the ground, fighting the forces coaxing them to floating. They would rather not have carried on, rather not persisted, but the walls still towered tall as trees and the curse still towered, too, and so the Minotaur walked, and walked, and walked.

But after they had taken two lefts and then a right, they spotted a peculiar glow. The Minotaur raised their head, swept their billowing fringe to the side, and saw a mermaid peek curiously over a labyrinth wall and come swooping down over it in a graceful arch. She was a sight to be seen: round-bellied and sturdy up top but with a slim and trailing tail, with a broad, sharp-toothed mouth and webbed fingers. She had wispy, seaweed-like tendrils all over and they did indeed glow where they quivered in the stream, enticing her prey and tricking them into an untimely fanged death. On her head they were the most numerous, long enough for little lost creatures to get all tangled up – she could snack without lifting a finger. She circled the Minotaur twice, and she laughed a laugh that was more bubbles than sound.

“Why, hello,” she said. “You’re no fish.”

“I’m a Minotaur,” said the Minotaur, and tried to figure out where to put their fiddling hands. They felt all of a sudden very heavy, thick and clumsy.

“I like your head-thingies. They’re neat,” said the mermaid, and she smiled.

“They’re horns.” 

“Neat.” The mermaid blinked her large, luminescent eyes. “I know this one whale and he has something sort of like that, but on his nose. You two should meet, I bet you would have stuff to talk about.”

The Minotaur did not know what a whale was and thought having a horn on one’s nose sounded quite silly, but nodded a little all the same.

“Thank you,” they said.

The mermaid tilted her head.

“For what?” she said, and the Minotaur wished they had bit their tongue and killed the words on their way out.

“I’m sorry.” 

“For what?” said the mermaid again, and she laughed up a whole shoal of little bubbles.

Without giving an answer, the Minotaur looked at their hooves. Beneath the fur, they were hot with shame.

 “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,” the mermaid went on, undeterred. “Hey! How about I show you around?”

“You can’t,” the Minotaur muttered.

“Sure I can. Oh, I know you’ll _love_ the caves. We should find one you can have for your own, best thing if it’s real close to mine.”  

“You can’t!”

The mermaid started. Her tendrils trembled indignantly.

“Don’t yell,” she said. “I’m scared of loud noises and also it’s rude.”

“Sorry,” said the Minotaur. They breathed in, swallowed down salt. It stung their throat. “It’s just that I’m not allowed to leave this labyrinth.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a curse.”

The sea was not a silent place, unlike the air it had a pulse. A hum like the blood in your ear that thrummed through the water, snuck up close to the body to stroke the skin. The Minotaur listened to it closely and leaned in against the touch, waiting for the mermaid to flee, but when at last they glanced up through their fringe, she was still there. She shrugged.

“I don’t know what a curse is but it sounds silly,” she said. “You probably shouldn’t care about it and come with me instead.”

“Not until I find a way out of this labyrinth. Until then I can’t do anything but walk. The Gods put me in here and they said so.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because I’m a monster, I guess,” said the Minotaur, and the Mermaid frowned.

“Rude.” She grabbed hold of the Minotaur’s arm with her cheerfully clammy fingers. “Now let’s go, already! There’s so, so much to show.”

A sob welled up from within the Minotaur, a sob and quite a bit of anger.

“Don’t you understand anything? I’ve been walking and walking for hundreds of years and there is no way out or if there is it’s hidden where I can’t find it. I can’t even die, just walk around in here alone and I don’t want to but I have been anyway because maybe I could be free one day, but even though I tried so hard they put me down here to forget me and I still can’t find a way out!” The Minotaur’s tears blended seamlessly with the water. “I can’t get out of here!”

The mermaid shook her head.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “Just swim up!”

And with her thousand glowing tendrils twirling around her she rose from the ocean floor, spinning high into the water. The Minotaur stood and looked at her victoriously circle above and come diving back from atop the wall with her hands reached out in offer.

 _Of course,_ they thought. _Up._

The Minotaur laughed. It was more bubbles than sound. 


End file.
